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The Future of Email

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Re: The Future of Email

#51
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have secure email I think html /css should be dropped from email support and the inbox should work on an invite only basis. Basically you should pre-authorize the senders just like you add someone as friend on a social network.

> Basically you should pre-authorize the senders This is kinda what 'masked email' services like Fastmail's – of which I am a delighted customer – do. Until you've known the comfort of creating an address; giving it to a service; deciding that you want to end your relationship with them; just deleting that address, without changing your mailbox or infrastructure or archives or anything else … it's kinda life changing…

I like per recipient emails, but I worried how I would know I authorized that sender to send to lonely chicken. The original site could have been compromised.

That's why I bought my email domain and use @hnrobert42.com. It helps to use a password manager.

I get a lot of convincing emails to linkedin@hnrobert42.com. As well as zynga, wework, etc.

Re: The Future of Email

#53
post #47

email is turning into a walled-garden of big tech. For instance, I am self-hosted, that without DNS. The email designers were carefull to make the email system work without DNS, that with email addresses with IP literals: mailbox@[x.x.x.x] and mailbox@[ipv6:...] (and I guess once ipv4 is really gone, the ipv6: prefix will be dropped). This is stronger thas SPF, since as soon as a IP literals in the envelope and the v…

I think it's more they simply don't register small tech and self-hosting.

In time there will be a reckoning though. The geopolitical instability at the moment will see the end of the US dominant services used outside of the US so they will have to work out how to make a not small but balkanised email provider model work again.

Re: The Future of Email

#54

We’re basically outsourcing email judgment to AI, then trying to compensate by strengthening SPF/DKIM. That feels like hardening the locks while handing out more master keys.

I think there's several things going on at once in that space. This is just their vocalisation of it because it suits them.

The thing is Fastmail can't speak with absolute authority about email because Fastmail is not email. It's subordinate to it.

Re: The Future of Email

#55
> The first is AI filtering: the systems that decide what’s spam, what’s phishing, and what deserves your attention.

Not so for Google Workspace. I get more spam and fake invoices and DocuSign contracts than I used to.

Re: The Future of Email

#56

I find it hard to judge how much, if at all, this will help, but I'm all for email being more secure, to the point that organizations (banks, governments, insurance companies) stop creating walled-email alternatives: please log in to our secure message center, where you can only see our messages poorly formatted, and for a short time, until we permanently delete them . I like that my Inbox is a somewhat-searchable, h…

> I'm all for email being more secure, to the point that organizations (banks, governments, insurance companies) stop creating walled-email alternatives This will literally never happen. Email doesn't support the features that those messaging platforms need to have, such as recalling messages. The security layers are also only on the sender part, not on the receiver part, which banks care a lot more about.

> Email doesn't support the features that those messaging platforms need to have, such as recalling messages.

"Need".

Re: The Future of Email

#57

What's the point of this article? The most I got was "email is here to stay," followed by some discussion of an MCP server for their proprietary mail platform. I particularly don't understand the constant fanfare around discussions of SPF/DKIM/DMARC. They're widely understood, published RFCs that have been around for at least 10-15 years, some of them longer. They're not obscure folk wisdom passed down through genera…

Yeah, it's the same thing with self-hosting email. The technical side is documented and the tradeoffs are well known. It's the up front effort of migration, maintenance and mails landing in spam that gets people down and so on. Though once you get going it's supposed to become easier with time.

Also there's a spectrum from Gmail to Fastmail to AWS SES to Wireguard on a VPS that's tunneling to a server running at home. And when the people from both extremes of the spectrum interact they look at each other as if they're from other planets.

It's the same for Auth stuff I believe, almost a decade of generic advice like "don't roll your own auth" has lead some people to file it into a tidy corner of their mind labelled "DON'T TOUCH" so most people end up gawking and staring in awe when someone does so and lose all nuance along the way. To be clear I'm advocating for learning how stuff works and playing around with it (time permitting) instead of simply delegating it to the technical equivalent of Higher Powers in perpetuity.

Re: The Future of Email

#58
post #25

The easiest and best filter is to screen emails. Only emails that were screened in once go to your inbox. It's that easy. HEY.com introduced it, and I can't see email without it; that's why I integrated it into my TUI email client, neomd [1]. Since then, when I get an email from Amazon that lands in my "To Screen" box, I am automatically alerted and know it is potentially spam, because I have approved Amazon and legi…

This is basically where I (and I imagine many others) have landed with the telephone. Anyone not in my contacts goes to voice mail. Made my phone usable again.

still not many are doing it with emails. but great point, tough we all still have to pick unknown calls here and there as we expect someone, so with the email screener it's even better, as each email has a sender.

Re: The Future of Email

#59
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love hearing that I received a "secure message", with no further detail. Straight to trash -- I don't read "secure messages". My inbox is probably more secure.

The gp isn't talking about spam using "secure message" as bait to open unwanted email. Instead, legitimate companies like banks, healthcare, etc tell users to click on a url link to their "Secure Message Center" to read or submit some critical information. It's often the only way to get the info the users need. E.g. if I open a payment dispute with the bank, the workflow they use is the Secure Message area. I can't j…

> The gp isn't talking about spam using "secure message" as bait to open unwanted email.

No, this includes all messages from my doctor/healthcare. It's not mass spam.

Theoretically I could want to know what's in the message, but not enough to visit a website I've been logged out of again, perform multi-factor authentication, navigate to the message center and find the message and then back it up manually.

Re: The Future of Email

#60
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have secure email I think html /css should be dropped from email support and the inbox should work on an invite only basis. Basically you should pre-authorize the senders just like you add someone as friend on a social network.

> Basically you should pre-authorize the senders This is kinda what 'masked email' services like Fastmail's – of which I am a delighted customer – do. Until you've known the comfort of creating an address; giving it to a service; deciding that you want to end your relationship with them; just deleting that address, without changing your mailbox or infrastructure or archives or anything else … it's kinda life changing…

Apple’s Hide My Email does the same thing and it’s just phenomenal.
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